Stephanie Akles

Stephanie Akles serves as a key procurement professional within the FA8576 Aflcmc Eskc, a critical unit of the Department of the Air Force focused on advancing resilient positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities for air, space, and cyber operations. She manages the acquisition lifecycle for engineering services essential to modernizing embedded GPS/inertial navigation systems (EGI) and deploying software-defined user equipment. Her work directly supports the agency’s mission to ensure operational superiority in contested and degraded environments by securing cutting-edge technical solutions that enhance PNT resilience. She routinely handles complex, high-stakes contracts for systems integration, algorithm development, and hardware-software co-design in secure military contexts. Her contractor relationships are centered on top-tier engineering firms with deep expertise in defense-grade navigation systems, signal processing, and secure firmware development. She collaborates with a network of specialized vendors capable of delivering classified PNT technologies under strict ITAR and DFARS compliance. These partnerships are typically long-term, performance-based engagements requiring rigorous technical validation and rapid prototyping cycles, often involving dual-use commercial technologies adapted for military applications. Stephanie’s procurement portfolio reflects a strict focus on open competition, with 100% of acquisitions issued under non-set-aside categories. While she does not prioritize socioeconomic set-asides such as 8(a), HUBZone, or SDVOSB, her approach emphasizes technical capability and mission readiness over socioeconomic criteria, ensuring that only vendors with proven expertise in advanced PNT systems are selected. Her primary procurement focus lies within NAICS 541330 (Engineering Services), encompassing systems engineering, embedded software development, inertial navigation algorithm design, and ruggedized hardware integration. She specializes in procuring services that enable the transition from legacy EGI architectures to software-defined, reconfigurable PNT platforms, reflecting a deep technical understanding of military navigation modernization priorities.